The output has fallen of on the site lately – I’ve been working and traveling, but I have to share two road experiences.
First, I was in Boston teaching a class, and I finally got the opportunity of going to a game at Fenway Park. It is a beautiful, historic ballpark, and my friends and I sat down the right field corner, just past the “Pensky Pole” (right field foul pole). Yes, the seats were not built for the “portly” among us (it was hard getting into and out of seats), and my knees were crushed against the seats in front of me, so that when I did get up, I looked like Groucho Marx.
The Sox were playing the Angels, a match-up that looked good early in the season with both teams preseason picks for the playoffs, but both teams have suffered and underperformed. (On that note, David Ortiz should just retire. On the night I went, he went 0-4 with 2 strikeouts and the other 2 times, he grounded into double plays. He looks horrible at the plate.)
The Sox won 5-1; it was a chilly night; and I felt like I had spent nine innings in a Cuisinart; but it was definitely worth it.
But the best was still to come. I had to travel to Pittsburgh for work, and I was openly hoping for the Penguins and Montreal Canadians to play a game 7. the Penguins won game 5 at home and Montreal won game 6 in Canada for force game 7.
So I paid $100 over face to sit in the rafters for a game 7. Unfortunately, only one team showed. Sidney Crosby took a bad boarding call in the very first minute of the game, and the Canadians capitalized for a 1-0 lead. Then the floodgates opened – another goal in the first period and then two ugly goals early in the second, and the home team was down 4-2. A final Habs tally in the third period and the Penguins, defending Stanley Cup champions, were done.
A lot of people in the media were saying that Crosby failed, and as captain, he does shoulder responsibility, but in the third period, the Sidney Crosby I saw was still hustling, working in the corners, fighting for position in front of the net. It was other people who failed worse. Marc Andre Fleury didn’t show up at all. There were defensive breakdowns in the first 1½ periods, but he never came up with the big save when the team needed it. Pulling him was the best thing the Pittsburgh coach did all night. Sergei Gonchar was sleepwalking. On the Canadians’ third goal – a shorthanded goal, Gonchar watched his man skate past him and fire one past Fleury. It was inexcusable.
But the goat of the game to me was Evgeni Malkin. With his parents in attendance, Malkin turned the puck over numerous times; came nowhere close to a serious shot on goal and he played like he was covered in BP oil for most of the game. It was the worst effort I’ve ever seen from a “superstar” in a big game (but I didn’t see LeBron James against the Celtics in game 5 the night before either).
In addition, it was the final game for “the Igloo,” Mellon Arena. I can see why the team needs a new arena: From where I was sitting, I could see the whole ice, but I couldn’t see the scoreboard for the very top level of balcony seats. It was obvious that the arena just kept building more balconies as they needed more seats. A small television allowed me to see the replays, but most maddening, I couldn’t see the time, so I couldn’t tell how much time was left in the period or the timing on penalties.
Anyway, it was a great trip. I’ll have to make a trip to the new Penguins arena when it opens – I hope the team’s effort will be better then.

Why is it that the most religious politicians talk the talk but don’t walk the walk? Rep. Mark Souder, R-Indiana, abruptly announced his resignation today, after acknowledging that he “sinned against God” by engaging in a relationship with a member of his staff.
The 59-year-old married father of three, who just won a very competitive primary (but with less than 50% of the vote total), said he will leave office at the end of the week. “I believe it is the best decision for my family, the people of northeast Indiana, and our country,” an emotional Souder said at a news conference in his district. “I will submit my resignation to Speaker Pelosi effective this Friday.”
Souder has been one of the loudest voices calling for teen abstinence and other conservative issues.
All I can say is – here’s one Republican who had an affair with a woman at least.

We all know that “Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull” sucked. It made lots of money regardless, but it wasn’t a worthy successor and lots of blog sites put the blame squarely on the shoulders of Shia LaBeouf. The thing is – he agrees.
The 23-year-old is at Cannes to support the upcoming “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” a sequel to the Academy Award winning “Wall Street” that earned Michael Douglas an Oscar and put the phrase “Greed is Good” into the popular use. LaBeouf (who also starred in the film version of excrement – the “Transformers” films) told reporters at the Cannes International Film Festival that the last time he starred in a remake, 2008’s Indiana Jones sequel. he didn’t do a very good job.
“I feel like I dropped the ball on the legacy that people loved and cherished,” LaBeouf told the newspaper (quoted by CNN.com). “If I was going to do it twice, my career was over. So this was fight-or-flight for me.” He said that he didn’t think the film fooled anyone, and he blamed his acting skills – not the writers or director Steven Spielberg.
“You get to monkey-swinging and things like that and you can blame it on the writer and you can blame it on Steven. But the actor’s job is to make it come alive and make it work, and I couldn’t do it. So that’s my fault,” he said. “I think the audience is pretty intelligent. I think they know when you’ve made … . And I think if you don’t acknowledge it, then why do they trust you the next time you’re promoting a movie.”
Agreed!

I have been out of town for the past week and didn’t have time to get to the site, but I’m back and let’s go!
The Huffington Post reported through television station KXAN in Austin, Texas that the University of Texas has said no to a former law professor who is calling for the school to change the name of a dorm that is ordained after Ku Klux Klan organizer William Simkins.
Thomas Russell, now a professor at the University of Denver, began researching Simkins while at Texas and he found that Simkins, who taught law at UT from 1899 to 1929, “advocated his Klan past to Texas students” and was “explicitly concerned with the sexual defense of white women.” The campus newspaper, the Daily Texan, has agreed. The editorial board opined that “it seems entirely reasonable to dishonor such a dishonorable man.”
The university has responded that it has no plans to change the building’s name. Reportedly, Texas officials with the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement are well aware of Simkins’ past. “Simkins’ affiliation with the Klan is deplorable and offensive, that is true,” said the division’s Associate Director of Communications Leslie Blair. “And although he was not memorialized with his name on a building until 1954, The University of Texas has since moved on.” The renaming of the building would require involvement from the Board of Regents, Blair said.
“To rename the building would set a huge precedent–one that could end up costing a great deal of money and time,” Blair said. “We feel that a better use of our time and money would be to continue to recruit and to provide programs that support more students, faculty and staff from populations underrepresented at the University and to further a climate of inclusiveness and cultural diversity that looks to the future instead of dwelling on the past.”
Vice President of Diversity and Community Engagement Gregory Vincent told KXAN that the issue is “moot” because the school plans to eventually raze to the dorm, though he could not provide a timeline for the destruction.
I, of course, have another way to “honor” Simkins. Since he was so concerned about the defense of white women, all dark skinned students who reside in the dorm should make every attempt to have as much sex with white women as they can. Consensual, of course, but I think it should be a mission to have as much interracial sex IN THE DORM as possible. In whatever part of Hell Simkins is in, it would just get hotter.

What is it with Arizona? A few years ago, the state was boycotted for refusing to go along with the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. birthday national holiday causing African-Americans to boycott Arizona until it got with the program. But that’s nothing compared with the new immigration bill which in effect allows police to stop anyone believed to be illegal and asked for identification. We haven’t seen this type of thing since South Africa’s Apartheid was dismantled or perhaps the Nazis. (I can imagine police stopping Latinos in the streets asking them for their “papers.”)
As someone who has been the subject of racial profiling, it isn’t fun. It is demeaning and upsetting, and believe me, I don’t look like a gangbanger or a thug in any way and never have. And to have other ethnic people stopped for no apparent reason sounds like illegal search and seizure and failure of habeus corpus, but I’m no lawyer.
Many Latinos in the area are upset, and now, the real power is being flexed; that is, people are going to stop coming to Arizona for vacations; businesses concerned about appearances if for no other reason, are planning to move conventions and other events from Arizona.
It’s just the way this country is in the 21st Century – we take one step forward and we take two steps backwards. It’s like the dire predictions that everyone seems to have about the midterm elections – Republicans are expected to retake the House of Representatives and cut into Democratic majority in the Senate. How have they done this? Through continuing their strategy of lies, race-baiting, and automatically anything that the president and Democrats have come up with, without through or alternatives. Just being the party that is like the spoiled kid: holding it’s breath in the corner until it gets its way. It’s sad and maddening.

From time to time in my career, I’ve had to interview people for jobs, and in every case, I’ve had to go through training to make sure that I ask appropriate questions. Questions about race, sex, religion, sexual preference are not allowed by law. Above that, these types of questions are irrelevant – they have nothing to do with how well the person will do the job.
Admittedly, none of the jobs I’ve participated in, as interviewer or interviewee have been for positions that paid millions of dollars, or are matters of public scrutiny, but then again, I never had the talent to play in the NFL, where I guess that is alright.
So many young athletes come from bad backgrounds and some have crinimal proceedings in their pasts, so I understand questioning about character, but Miami Dolphins general manager Jeff Ireland went WAY over the line.
Ireland asked wide receiver Dez Bryant, if his mother is a prostitute during an interview at the league’s scouting combine. Bryant, a talented wide receiver who got into trouble off the field while in college at Oklahoma State, first revealed in an interview with Yahoo! Sports last week that he had been asked that, but declined to say who had posed the inquiry.
Ireland has now acknowledged that it was him and said he’s sorry. “My job is to find out as much information as possible about a player that I’m considering drafting,” Ireland said in a statement he sent to the Miami Herald. “Sometimes that leads to asking in-depth questions. Having said that, I talked to Dez Bryant and told him I used poor judgment in one of the questions I asked him. I certainly meant no disrespect and apologized to him.”
Bryant was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys, a team known to have had players with criminal issues in the past, but Bryant would certainly been a very high draft pick, but he paid the price for previous indiscretions by being drafted much lower, a situation that has cost the young man in the pocketbook. Isn’t that payment enough, or do these bozos get to demean and degrade these young men as well?
I hope that Dez Bryant has a productive career and I also hope that he is able to stay clean and out of trouble. And I hope this moron Ireland is at least punished by the league. If I was Bryant, I’d sue him under Federal anti-discrimination statutes.

It was announced this week that Milwaukee Brewers radio announcer and long time television personality Bob Uecker is scheduled to undergo heart surgery on Friday and will need two to three months to recover.
Uecker, a Hall of Fame announcer, won a World Series ring with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1964 and played in Philadelphia and Atlanta before retiring in 1967. He made a great living in comedy, mostly talking about his exploits on the field (or mostly on the bench). He also starred in commercials, particularly the Miller Lite commercials and he also starred in the television sitcom “Mr. Belvedere,” and was the announcer in the “Major League” movies.
But he was all business in the booth, his 40th season calling Brewers games. I have always loved him as a comedian, pitchman, and announcer. I wish him the best and hope he’s back with the Brewers soon.